Volunteering at Eldergarden in Greeley rewarding for injured truck driver

RJ Charles smiles as he helps Mary and Jan, clients of Eldergarden, 910 27th Ave., Greeley, with their breakfast. Charles hurt his knee while driving a truck hauling crude oil for Gazelle Transportation, and rather than sit at home, the company paid him to volunteer at the adult day care facility.

Barb, center, a client of Eldergarden, grimaces as she gets to the dregs of her hot chocolate while June, left, laughs and RJ Charles, right, offers to get her some more. Charles volunteers at the adult day care facility 40 hours a week after hurting his knee, and he spends most of his time visiting the clients. Many of the clients have dementia or Alzheimer's, and Eldergarden cares for them during the day to give their caregivers a break or to allow them to keep a job.

The non-profit adult day care agency is located at 910 27th Ave. in Greeley. The agency watches clients who require daily care and can’t be left alone for more than a couple hours. The agency helps caregivers keep a job or get a break. Fees are charged on a sliding scale based on income. For more information, go to www.eldergarden.org or call (970) 353-5003.

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On the first day RJ Charles started volunteering for Eldergarden, he walked through the front doors and right into Judy VanEgdom’s office, rather than left toward the clients there for the day.

Charles had a confession. He was scared.

VanEgdom understood, as Eldergarden is an adult day care facility, a place that watches mostly people with Alzheimer’s or dementia, and they tend to make people unfamiliar with their conditions nervous.

But Charles was too familiar. He had grandparents who had Alzheimer’s. His grandmother was docile as long as music was on, but his grandfather would occasionally turn violent.

Both of them lived in lockdown facilities in Sterling, which could feel like a prison. Whenever Charles would bring his son for a visit, they thought he was Charles. They didn’t know Charles at all.

Charles loved his grandparents until they died — his grandfather died eight years ago, his grandmother four — but there were a lot of painful memories because of the disease. Charles didn’t want to dig them up again.

“It was really, really hard,” Charles said while choking back a tear.

VanEgdom urged him to try. People assume Eldergarden is a sad place, she said, but the clients sing songs, play games and talk over the newspaper, cereal and coffee in the morning. They dance and do arts and crafts and go on field trips. It’s much easier for the Eldergarden staff to spend time with clients because they know their history. Family members understandably mourn that history, but Eldergarden staff see their clients for who they are now.

The truth was, Eldergarden needed Charles. His aunt, Jo Huey, wrote books for caregivers for family members with Alzheimer’s based on her experiences with Charles’ grandparents and founded the Alzheimer’s Caregivers Institute. And even if they were painful, Charles’ own experiences would give him a head start.

Eldergarden had more than 100 volunteers, but Charles would be there 40 hours a week. He would be a great resource. Plus, Eldergarden already had to reduce its staff after nearly closing last year. Times are better now, but the additional manpower would be welcome.

What Charles, 50, would discover was that he needed Eldergarden, too. Charles was there because he hurt his knee, although destroyed may be a better word. Charles works for Gazelle Transportation as a truck driver who hauled crude oil, a byproduct of natural gas drilling. He slipped on an icy patch on sandy ground while on a job, and his left knee took the brunt of the fall.

That sent Charles to his rural LaSalle home, where he sat, bored and in pain. Charles was a medical equipment technician for many years before he moved to truck driving the last couple of years, and so he’s a tinkerer. He eased the boredom, and the pain, by moving things around, such as the furniture, and taking stuff apart. His wife, Tammy, “encouraged” him to go back to work, so he applied for light jobs.

Rather than pay him to stay home and drive his wife crazy, Gazelle, through its community worker program, suggested he volunteer at Eldergarden. VanEgdom was thrilled.

“I’d never heard of anything like this,” she said.

Gazelle, which is based in Bakersfield, Calif., but also operates a facility in Lucerne that’s been there for a year, puts injured workers in local community programs as a way to get them back to work, said Michele Kehoe, human resources director for Gazelle.

The company makes sure a doctor signs off on it first, then relies on a third-party business to hook up the injured worker with a program.

“The quicker you get injured workers back to work, the better,” Kehoe said. “There’s so many studies that say moving is better for you. So we think it’s a win-win.”

On his first day, once he left VanEgdom’s office, Charles went to the back, where the residents were eating breakfast, and asked if anyone wanted coffee. Right away, it was easier than he feared.

Rather than dredge up memories of his grandparents, the clients brought back memories of his time as a medical technician, when he would drop off oxygen bottles and talk with residents in assisted-living or nursing homes. Being a technician was tough, as he was on call at all hours, but his conversations with those residents made the job fun.

He’s now been there a month. He shows up at breakfast and continues to serve coffee as well as small talk. He’s fixed up their wheelchairs with his tinkering ways. He’s learned how to calm them during their moments of agitation. And he has skills not even VanEgdom anticipated.

During last week’s wild storm that sparked a few tornado warnings, he settled the panicked clients by showing them that the storm was headed away from central Greeley. He learned how to read storms as a trained spotter in his early days as a volunteer firefighter in Merino.

His left knee hurts him most of the day. There’s a chance it will need to be replaced. He’ll find out Friday when he undergoes surgery. He hopes he can come back to volunteer at Eldergarden during his recovery.

Even Tammy helps now: She’s whipping the backyard garden back into shape after work.

“Part of me wishes I could do this all the time rather than have to go back to work,” Charles said. “I’m much happier here than I would have been at home.”

The memories of his grandparents still hurt. But now he’s found some help. The clients aren’t his family and, at first, that helped him feel more comfortable around them.

“But they feel that way now,” Charles said about his new family.

— Staff writer Dan England covers the outdoors, entertainment and general assignment stories for The Tribune. His column runs on Tuesday. If you have an idea for a column, call (970) 392-4418 or e-mail dengland@greeleytribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @ DanEngland.